ah yea it was probably 1800usd all said and done, in the realm of laptops i guess that is on the expensive side, but it runs like usain bolt, and is pretty resiliant to stupid moves (ie: tracking mount slowly pulls it off the table outside and it hits the cement from ~1m and i can't even find a mark)

i don't know if it helps in anyway and i'm just a stranger, but i'll send you anything you want from the usa i heard that someone got a laptop through aussie (notoriously aggresive) customs without reciever fees by saying it was sent for repair or something of the like.

Merlin66 wrote:Hmmm.
A lap top would be preferred - to allow it's use at the SHG for image collection.

Pretty much any off-the-shelf laptop should have a SSD and USB3 in it nowadays. What sort of budget?

If you already have a laptop then replacing the HDD with a SSD isn't a major job. You can get USB-to-HDD cables that allows you to mirror the existing drive onto the new SSD. Then just swap the drives over.

Is Amazon an option for you? I don't know if the postage would be an issue if you had prime or if prime is available to Australia.
BTW.. not as good of deal online as I got at Office Depot from the floor but if you look at the used available there are currently some nice offerings.
The total model number for the one that I got is as follows.. s55t-B5273NR, that will get the Quad i7 8GB RAM and a standard 5400 1TB drive
Just trying to help and don't know what works as far as ordering for Australia.
Here's wishing you luck.

Lunt pressure tuned 60mm with 1200 blocking filter.
And Baader 5D solar film filters for all of my lenses and telescopes.

Gert,
It's obtaining a solar image by using a Spectroheliograph - a spectral image is scanned across the disk at a nominated wavelength and bandwidth.
See the book "Imaging Sunlight" for all the details.
The key is to scan the disk as quickly as possible this needs a fast mono camera and a fast hard drive to store the image.
Hope this helps.
Ken